as a priest might be procured without a moment’s delay, and as ALMEIDA’S consent was already given; he would then obtain the possession of her person, by the very act in which she perfidiously resigned it to his rival; to whom he would then leave the beauties he had already possessed, and cast from him in disdain, as united with a mind that he could never love.  As his imagination was fired with the first conception of this design, he caught her to his breast with a fury, in which all the passions in all their rage were at once concentered:  ’Let the priest,’ said he, ’instantly unite us.  Let us comprize, in one moment, in this instant, now, our whole of being, and exclude alike the future and the past!’ Then grasping her still in his arms, he looked up to heaven:  ‘Ye powers,’ said he, ’invisible but yet present, who mould my changing and unresisting form; prolong, but for one hour, that mysterious charm, that is now upon me, and I will be ever after subservient to your will!’

Almeida, who was terrified at the furious ardor of this unintelligible address, shrunk from his embrace, pale and trembling, without power to reply.  Hamet gazed tenderly upon her; and recollecting the purity and tenderness with which he had loved her, his virtues suddenly recovered their force; he dismissed her from his embrace; and turning from her, he dropped in silence the tear that started to his eye, and expressed, in a low and faultering voice, the thoughts that rushed upon his mind:  ‘No,’ said he; Hamet shall still disdain the joy, which is at once sordid and transient:  in the breast of Hamet, lust shall not be the pander of revenge.  Shall I, who have languished for the pure delight which can arise only from the interchange of soul with soul, and is endeared by mutual confidence and complacency; shall I snatch under this disguise, which belies my features and degrades my virtue, a casual possession of faithless beauty, which I despise and hate?  Let this be the portion of those, that hate me without a cause; but let this be far from me!’ At this thought, he felt a sudden elation of mind; and the conscious dignity of virtue, that in such a conflict was victorious, rendered him, in this glorious moment, superior to misfortune:  his gesture became calm, and his countenance sedate; he considered the wrongs he suffered, not as a sufferer, but as a judge; and he determined at once to discover himself to Almeida, and to reproach her with her crime.  He remarked her confusion without pity, as the effect not of grief but of guilt; and fixing his eyes upon her, with the calm severity of a superior and offended being, ‘Such,’ said he, ’is the benevolence of the Almighty to the children of the dust, that our misfortunes are, like poisons, antidotes to each other.’